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Gaara was born small, weak, and helpless. As he was growing in Karura's womb, there was something growing in him, a parasite feeding off its host. Someone handed Gaara to his mother, and she held him close, marveling at the tiny body, amazed and thankful that her son had survived the difficult premature birth.
Karura could feel herself getting weaker, each breath more difficult than the one before, each blink slower and softer. She thought of her other children, how they were growing strong already, developing personalities already, becoming their own people already. She thought of her brother, who had no one but her, who would be crushed by her death. She thought of her husband, who would be left with three children and a village to take care of. She thought of this child cradled in her hands, struggling to live as she was fading. He would not know his mother, and she would not know her son. She would not watch him grow as she had watched the others, she would not know the person he would grow to be.
In her last moments, cradling Gaara gently, Karura did not spare a thought to the demon sealed into the body of her youngest.
She was the last person in a long time who would look at Rasa's son and only see Gaara.
Living in Sunagakure was never an easy life. Between the economic hardships and the unforgiving landscape, citizens of Suna were taught to be strong before anything else. But living constantly in the public eye forced the Kazekage's children to grow up with a sharp cynicism and a hard protective shell that it would take years of brutal ninja training for their peers to develop.
The weak do not survive long in the desert.
People remember Gaara's bloodthirst, but they forget how cruel Kankuro was, how he too enjoyed hurting those weaker than him. They remember Gaara threatening his siblings, but they forget how Temari had two little brothers and chose to love one over the other. But they weren't choosing to be malicious. They were first and foremost choosing to survive.
This is the decision that all ninjas make at some point, all killers, really. The decision that their own lives, their own values, are worth more than those who oppose them.
This is the ship I will go down on, this is the hill where I make my last stand. This is my last straw, my final warning, my last breath. This land is where they will dig my grave if I get one. This is what I will die for.
People remember Gaara's insanity, but they forget Suna's. They forget how well Suna knows poisons, knows puppets, knows deceit. If Konoha breathed fresh sunlight and Kiri breathed a bloody gasp, then Suna breathed a dusty rattle, recycling old air, wheezing out and in the same breath of gas. Suna's walls are hunched shoulders, a skeleton so desperate to protect itself from the outside world that it curls in too far and implodes. People remember the demons. They do not remember the hubris of the villages that sought to control them.
When people look at Gaara, they see where he broke, where he snapped. They think they are seeing something cracked, something that has collapsed. They look at Gaara, and they think they are seeing failed organs, are seeing broken bones. They are not. They are seeing scar tissue, they are seeing a system crumbled, still working. They are seeing a man who has not. given. up.
Gaara tried so very hard to be more than what people expected of him. He faced rejection again and again, from everyone from store-owners to his father's guards to the other school children. In Konoha, Naruto fought an attention war, and battled dirty looks with petty crimes. But the weak and innocent do not survive in Suna, and Gaara was left with no retaliation available besides violence.
You do not belong here, the people of Suna said. You are a monster and this is our land, not yours. You will never be worth anything, you will never mean anything to us. They taunted him. You will never call this place your home.
Gaara planted his feet in the sand, said fuck that, and carved himself a place in Suna.
If you do not want me here that does not matter. I persist.
From his birth onward, people looked at Gaara and they saw a monster. They should not have been surprised when a monster began to look back.
Gaara had not wanted to be cruel, had not wanted to be feared. He did not want to be the kind of man his father was. But Suna does not accept weakness, and if that was the kind of person he needed to be to survive, then so be it.
Konoha had allowed Naruto to be weak, had allowed him to be soft and trusting and hopeful. They had been content to slide their eyes past him with nothing but a disgusted grunt and a grimace. Naruto had learned to hate it, had learned that any attention was better than nothing. He had learned to beg. to plead, please someone, anyone, look at me, just look at me.
Gaara, walking down the dark streets of Suna, huddled and stumbling, feeling the dark eyes of the villagers, begged for the opposite. Ignore me, I want to blend in, just please just for once don't look at me.
When Naruto met Gaara, he taught him a new way to live, a new way to be. Many, even including Gaara, would consider this new way a better way. But Gaara was already living, had already learned the lesson that took Naruto a thousand whispered promises to learn.
When there is no one to believe in you, no one to trust you, no one to love you, you keep going on anyway.
Naruto spent two and a half years training and growing. Gaara spent those two and a half years in a hometown that hated him, with no one but his siblings by his side. Siblings who had, until recently, believed him to be an irredeemable monster. Temari, who had only just begun to remember the love she had for her youngest brother. Kanuro, who was only just learning it now.
Gaara had hurt the people of Suna. He had killed their children, he had ripped apart families, he had been their monster in the night. They had made him, created their own demon. That does not mean that his reputation was unearned.
Still he persisted.
Many believed that a village would never accept a jinchuriki fully, would never accept them as a member of society, never mind trust them. Never mind allow him to lead them.
There were those who swore to curse his name, to think only dark thoughts about him, to wish him nothing but tragedy, to never allow the sight of him to pass by without a grimace to grace their face.
The same people who spat at Gaara in the streets would cheer at his coronation.
They had hated him, despised him. He had caused them heartbreak and loss, had been the reason behind nightmares and funerals. There are some things you can't apologize for, can't ask for forgiveness for, can't expect to be absolved for.
Gaara had helped ruin Suna. Ruined, but not destroyed. Gaara had also helped rebuild Suna.
He had taken them from the distrust and darkness of Rasa's rule, and ushered in a new time of prosperity and growth. He gives the people of Suna hope, allows them to trust in their futures, and in their fellow people.
When Gaara and his siblings are chosen to help at the Suna academy, he looks at the rosters. He goes through the lists of names. He counts the numbers in each classroom. He does his best to not remember which family names he recognizes. He does his best to ignore which classes are smaller than others. He does his best to not think about whether he was responsible for each small class, each family name missing.
He does not succeed, because there are some things you can never forgive yourself for.
When his siblings find Gaara hunched over the scroll of names, Kankuro pushes the roster off the table, and briefly grips Gaara's bicep in a tight grasp, because that is what he thought their father might have done. Temari ruffles her youngest brother's hair, and starts dinner, because that is what she thought their mother might have done. They were both still learning how to be siblings to the young redhead, were still learning how to love him.
It doesn't matter if they were right or wrong. Both Rasa and Karura were long dead, and for better or for worse, the three children sitting at the kitchen table were orphans.
When Naruto befriended Gaara, he tried to teach him the importance of valuing others, of being valued by others. He knew how soul-crushingly lonely it was to walk alone in a world of people, how difficult it was to keep going with no one but yourself to count on for motivation.
Naruto was teaching Gaara a new way of life. He was explaining what came naturally to others, what it had never occurred to anyone else, except maybe Yashamaru, to teach.
Gaara had been living in a world of faulty wiring, of static on a stereo. He had been living in a world of words that didn't mean anything.
Naruto had not brought color to a life of black and white. He had blown out the speakers at a silent movie, had pressed a megaphone to Gaara's ear and screamed.
It was terrifying and wonderful and completely overwhelming.
Naruto forced people to acknowledge him, and he did this with Gaara, implementing his own beliefs, his own values with a voice so loud and so convincing that Gaara was unequivocally and irreversibly changed forever.
But you rebuild the house on the same foundation.
Gaara was built for strength, was built for the long haul, was built to survive.
And when Naruto was gone, and the ringing in Gaara's ears had subsided, he still didn't give up. He persisted, because if Gaara was the sort of person to give up at hardship he would not have lived through childhood.
The weak do not survive Suna, and the weak do not survive Rasa.
Rasa had built Gaara with one hand and ruined him with the other. Ruined, but not destroyed.
Years later Gaara would think about the hard decisions Rasa had been forced to make, the sacrifices he had sanctioned, the deaths he had deemed acceptable losses.
He would begrudgingly admire his father's strength, his ability to do what he believed was best for the village.
If Rasa had been alive, he might have pointed out to his son his own failings, his inability to reconcile the desire to protect his family and to protect his village. If Rasa had been alive, he might have pointed out how Suna had prospered under Gaara's leadership, how the villagers trusted their Kazekage, how the ninja respected him, how the children no longer cringed away in fear.
But Rasa was dead, so it is not certain that Rasa would have been so open and generous with his son. So Kankuro said them instead, still learning how to love his little brother, and rather doing quite a good job of it.
Years ago, he had once confronted his little brother on the side of a cliff, and tried to explain that the villagers hate Gaara. He tried to convince Gaara that opinions would never change, that the people of Suna would never accept him as anything but a monster. That it was safer, that it was easier to not try and change their minds.
Kankuro was not being cruel. In fact, he was being as kind as he knew how to be. He was trying to spare his little brother the pain of failure, the pain of rejection that had tinged Gaara's first twelve years.
Gaara had acknowledged his older brother's words. They were true, and gentle, and even in their harshness had tried to shield Gaara from the reality of the village's opinions.
Gaara wasn't delusional. He knew what the people of Suna thought of him. He knew their opinions would not change overnight. He knew they would resist him at every turn, would spit at his attempts to change, would curse him and belittle him. He knew this.
Still he persisted.
Karura had been the first person to look at Gaara and feel no fear, no hate. She had been the first to look upon him and feel only love. She would not be the last.
By god she would not be the last.